Robert Siciliano and other hosts discuss whether Amazon's Alexa is spying on users. They cover government data requests to Amazon, the risk that Echo devices record conversations without consent, and what privacy means when you own a smart speaker.
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Alexa, would you give the government all my personal information?
Sure!
Thanks, Alexa. That's the concern many people have this morning. One major tech company admits it handed over lots of customer data, and it's not clear how much of it came from those popular smart speakers.
2017 was a big year for Amazon. Not only did it get record customers, it turned over a record amount of its information to the government.
Amazon Web Services has over a million clients. Those are small, medium, and large corporate clients. Uh, that means that, uh, government is going after these companies to get information on either the companies themselves or people like you and I.
The U.S. government gave Amazon more than 1,900 requests for customer data, and it complied with most. But those are the only requests we know about, and they apply to its web service cloud. Noticeably absent were numbers for shopping and smart speakers. Many are concerned because smart speakers record everything that happens in your home and keeps it.
Yes, the Amazon Echo and any other, uh, device that's recording your every move, uh, is something that should be suspect.
Security analyst Robert Siciliano with Hotspot Shield said your private life could be used against you if you run afoul of the government.
Any device that's recording anything about you, whether that's your computer where you're inputting information, the same thing with the mobile phone text messages sent back and forth, or any device that you wear or is monitoring the ambient sounds in your home.
For concerned customers, there's really only one option.
I actually don't have a device that records my life 24/7, 365. I'm a little afraid of it. The privacy and security implications are huge. There have been many cases already where people have been prosecuted, in regards to their devices slurping up information about them.
Okay, so in all cases, Amazon turned over customer information the government either had a subpoena for, a search warrant, or a court order. Amazon did not say if authorities used the Echo smart speaker to wiretap customers. But Gary, you say, I am still skeptical. Listen, I didn't trust Siri when she came out either.
That's what I'm saying. And how about this for sounding like we're the old-fashioned ones? Because we rely on the good old-fashioned internet for our research instead of Alexa.
We actually have to type it in.
I love the Google, but like I said, I didn't trust Siri for a while there. I was like, Siri, girl, I don't know.
Yeah, she got—
you know too much.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not about that. Me and you are the only ones in studio who don't have one of those things. Shane in the Hive has one, and yeah, he doesn't trust it either. Thanks, Layla.
